Smile
by ThereIsOnlyZuul
Summary: Things are always better for Harley Quinn when The Joker is smiling... unfortunately, he's not...


A story I once had posted under a different penname and have reposted here under my new one. It's rated M for language, violence - the usual things my stories are rated M for.

Hope you enjoy it, review it if you do! Cheers!

* * *

Harley Quinn was slumped over the toilet. She felt miserable and it was because of Joker. She felt alone. Abused. Neglected. She was injured. She was bleeding. None of this was new though: she'd been with Joker for years. She expected beatings – sometimes she could even convince herself that she liked them – but where as his other beatings were delivered while he smiled and laughed and cooed at her, this one had been delivered in complete silence (save for her own screams and cries of pain) and Joker had not been smiling.

It was always worse when Joker didn't smile.

Though, maybe he couldn't have smiled if he had wanted too. His jaw had been broken in the night. He'd gotten into the same fight he'd been having with Batman since the two first encountered each other. Joker had lost last night's round and only just managed to drag himself back to the hideout as the first rays of dawn lit the sky. He had no one who could help him but Harley – the crazies he called his henchmen ghouls were only good for causing death and destruction, like fuck they could be expected to fix it. So he had woken up Harley with tears in his eyes and asked her to help him. Harley had never seen him in so much pain and so – without knowing how to fix a broken jaw – she agreed.

"Fixing a broken jaw comes down to one thing: cracking the bone back into place." Joker had muttered with teeth gritted as he handed Harley a brick.

"Mistah J… I don't know if I can do that…"

"You have to Harley!" Joker snarled. Harley nodded her head in agreement as she looked into Joker's eyes. Anger glinted in his deranged eyes, but so did sadness and pain and fear. And that's why she took the brick and gripped it tightly in her hand: the fear. The fear in his eyes intrigued her.

"Okay Puddin'. I'll do it. Brace yourself."

"Don't you dare tell me what to do –"

Harley didn't wait for Joker to finish his threat. She needed to catch him unawares because she knew that any pain she gave Joker – helping him or not – would come right back to her sooner or later. She thought maybe if she did it suddenly enough the pain might knock him out and she could lay low for a few days while his fury ebbed.

It didn't knock him out. Not even close. He didn't even stumble or take a step backwards. He stood perfectly calm for a full five seconds before he lashed out at Harley with a knife he had been fingering in his pocket. His lash-out of anger was a quick one compared to others, but it was a precise one. He slashed her with the knife deeply across her arms and chest before kicking out her legs, straddling her, and hitting her repeatedly wherever he could land a blow.

He tired himself out before Harley lost consciousness. He stood on his own wobbly legs before limping off to the bedroom. Harley had stayed on her back, on the floor, gasping for air. She stayed there for hours: she watched the sun creep across the floor from the windows above her head. She watched the ghouls sulk in the shadows around where she lay.

No one tried to help her.

She wouldn't have let them if they had tried.

The sun was beginning to set by the time Harley felt able to move again without her body and soul shattering into millions of scarred little pieces. She dragged herself in the opposite direction that Joker had gone and locked herself in a seldom used bathroom. This is where she had fixed her wounds, cried her tears, and spent the night. She slept on the floor, the plastic shower curtain draped over herself in a vain attempt to create some kind of comfort. She woke up only a few hours after having fallen asleep and clutched her stomach as waves of nausea overtook her.

But this – this beating to within an inch of her life – this was not why she was miserable. She was miserable because she had missed her period for the last two months. She was miserable because she was pregnant. To be sure she'd done a home test the night before last, while Joker was stalking the streets, and it had shown what she had dreaded the most: the little pink positive sign…

Harley dry heaved, making herself cough and raising goosebumps along her bare arms. Silent tears streamed down her cheeks, mixing with the crimson blood of wounds that had reopened in the night and dripped… dripped… dripped into the dirty water in the dirty toilet in the dirty hovel she called a home.

The steady dripping of her blood lulled her into a state of comatose calm. She wondered about the baby growing inside her. She wondered what sex it would be, if she would be – could be – a good mother to it, if it would be relatively normal like her or without-question insane like Joker.

She wondered if it could still be alive after what had happened to her only a few hours ago…

There was a sudden bang on the bathroom door that made Harley jump. It didn't open though, which was good. A knock meant it was a ghoul, not Joker himself. The ghouls respected, or, at the very least, feared Harley enough to let her alone, to let her have her privacy.

"What?" Harley snapped, gagging on her own swollen tongue as she did.

"Joker wants to see you in the war room."

"Tell him to fuck himself!" Harley screamed as her stomach lurched. She leaned over the toilet but, once again, nothing came up but the sour taste of bile.

"He said you need to go to the war room now. Or else _both_ of you will regret it… whatever _that_ means," the ghoul added as an after thought.

Harley gasped. Her heart began to beat irregularly as her airways constricted. Bright light danced on the insides of her eyelids and she felt faint. She knew what Joker meant: it was her nightmare come to fruition. Joker _knew_ she was pregnant. She had left the fucking positive pregnancy test on her bedside table and now Joker knew she was pregnant!

The tight-clenched dread of anticipation of what was to come pushed Harley over the edge and she vomited the meagre contents of her stomach: bile and blood.

* * *

What's clarity like?

Do you remember that funny feeling inside your head when presented with a math problem too difficult to solve? The faint buzzing noise in your ears, a heaviness on both sides of your skull, and the sensation that your brain is twitching inside your cranium like a fish on a beach?

Clarity is the opposite of that, and Harley (for the first time in a long time) had some.

Joker knew she was pregnant. Harley knew he would kill her because of it. He would shout at her, berate her. Beat her: again. And then kill her. Well, he wasn't going to kill her before she said a few choice things to him. If the gun tucked into the back of Harley's tight fitting jeans had anything to do with what was about to happen, he wasn't going to get a chance to kill her at all.

Harley pushed open the door to Joker's self-proclaimed war room before her anger, her hate, her bravery dissipated and left her cowardly and pliable like she had been every time before. Joker sat near the back of the room on a throne made of guns. His face was badly swollen but Harley could still make out his expression and he still wasn't smiling.

It was always worse when Joker didn't smile.

"Hello Harley, m'dear. How are you feeling?"

"Just peachy." Harley replied as she walked towards where her beloved Mistah J sat.

"Really? Well I'm glad you feel better than you look, because you look like shit." Joker laughed dryly as he stood and walked towards Harley. They met each other halfway, coming to stop in the centre of the room to stare each other down.

"How do you feel, Puddin'?" Harley may have asked it with a sneer on her swollen lips but she was concerned: Joker looked worse than she did. After everything that Joker had ever done to her, Harley still loved him. He was like an addiction. She couldn't give him up because no matter how much pain he caused her, the few moments of pleasure were always worth it. She still dreamt about him, fantasized about him, adored him with every breath she took. His laugh still got her off, his smile still made her swoon. But he wasn't smiling now.

It was always worse when Joker didn't smile.

"How do I feel? I feel like you hit me in the fucking face with a brick a scant twenty-four hours ago! That's how I feel!" Joker looked Harley up and down before continuing. "But enough about me – who cares about me?"

"I care about you –"

"Shut up, Harley!" Joker snapped, cutting her off in mid-sentence. "I want you to tell me about this!" He flicked the used pregnancy test at her. She flinched as it bounced off her cheek. "I'll tell you it was something of a surprise to find that on your bedside table. Especially after the night I'd had. In all honesty, the last thing I wanted to find out on the same day you smashed me in the face with a brick, was that you're pregnant with a bouncy baby brat!" Harley remained silent. Joker grabbed her face and forced her to look him in the eyes. "Tell me about it, now!"

"Well, when a man and a woman love each other very much –" Joker slapped her across the face. She bit her tongue and felt it spilt open. Her mouth pooled with blood that she spit onto the ground at Joker's feet.

"Do you thinking you're funny?"

"I don't know. Do you think _you're_ funny?"

Joker slapped her across the face again. "How could you let yourself get pregnant? You stupid bitch, how could you do this to me?"

"To you? Don't you think you did this to me? Don't you think this affects me more than you?"

Joker ignored the question and asked his own. "How far along are you?"

"Just over two months."

Joker laughed again. "I thought you were looking a little fatter each day that passed. Oh, the ravages of motherhood! I can see it now: you'll be fat, you'll get those disgusting stretch marks, you'll be more emotionally unstable than you already are. Not to mention the pain of labour and actually pushing the little fucker out. I hope they have a good maternity doctor at Arkham because no doubt you'll get locked up again before you're due!"

Harley felt tears come back into her eyes. She locked away from Joker. "Can't you ever look on the bright side of things? A baby… a baby might be a good thing…"

"I suppose it could be. It could kill you on its way out."

Harley snapped her gaze back to Joker. He was like a thread that drew Harley back into the chaos… but this time, things were different. She didn't revel in the chaos. This time she was unravelling. "That is it! That is fucking it!" Harley reached behind her back and drew the gun she had hidden. "That is the last awful, nasty, cruel thing you will ever say to me!"

Joker raised his eyebrows. This was a twist he wasn't expecting. "Are you going to kill me, Harley?"

"You've done nothing but hurt me for as long as I've been with you. I gave up my whole life for you. I've broken you out of Arkham countless times. I've fixed your wounds. I've fought Batman. I've taken your unprovoked beatings. And after all of this, how do you react when I tell you I'm carrying your child? You say you hope that childbirth kills me!"

"That hardly answers my question, Harley. Are you going to kill me, or what?"

Harley took the safety off of the gun. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't."

Joker wiped the anger from his eyes. He let his swollen jaw fall from its sneer. He let the tears of pain cloud his vision as she stared at Harley. His Harley Quinn, his very own harlequin. His harlequin who was pointing a gun at his head when just days before she would have fallen to her knees to bow before him. She was covered with bruises and deep slashes from yesterday. Under the new bruises and slashes there were scars and healed bone fractures from the past.

Joker sighed deeply before speaking. "Maybe it's the gun pointed at my head but… but I feel awful for what I've done to you…"

Harley was immediately taken back by what Joker was saying. "You feel… guilt?" He sounded sincere, but Harley was more than a little dubious.

"How very bizarre." Joker muttered more to himself than Harley. "You're making me soft, Harley."

"Oh Puddin'… I'm not buying it."

Joker let his anger enter his eyes again. "Alright, so you're not as stupid as you look. But I can't possibly imagine what you want me to say to you right now! Just tell me what you want, Harley! Please, for god's sake, tell me what you want!"

Harley knew what she wanted. She threw the gun aside and grabbed Joker by his dirty, purple lapels. She kissed him, hating him just as much as she desired him. She pressed their swollen and painful lips together as hard as she could because it was the only way she could think to hurt him. Sex was the only thing she could use to hurt him.

"Harley, I do believe you're trying to seduce me before you answer my question."

"What question?" Harley asked as she grabbed Joker's hips and brought him closer to herself.

"Tell me how you got pregnant."

"How about I _show_ you how I got pregnant?" Harley remarked with a giggle as she took Joker's hand and began to lead him out of the war room and towards the bedroom. Joker laughed then and Harley's heart fluttered.

Things were always better when Joker was smiling.


End file.
